Ian Poulter has retained his PGA Tour card after fellow professional Brian Gay alerted officials to a discrepancy in the points structure used for players competing on major medical extensions.
After playing just 13 tournaments last year due to a foot injury, Poulter had 10 events this season to earn 218 FedEx Cup points or USD 347,634 to remain fully exempt.
He came up short in both categories with 155 FedEx Cup points and USD 317,010, but Gay, who was also playing on a medical exemption after back problems, unexpectedly came to the rescue.
“Obviously (it’s) quite a relief to know that I can play my schedule and plan my schedule for the rest of 2017,” Poulter said after Saturday’s third round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
“Being in kind of no-man’s-land, not knowing whether you’re going to play golf, is very tough.”
Gay had earned enough money to retain his card but not sufficient points to qualify for the Players Championship, which prompted him to discover a difference between the way points were allotted this season compared to a year ago.
The new structure offered significantly fewer points for players finishing between 15th and 68th, a scenario which the PGA Tour said “unintentionally made it more difficult for these players to retain their exempt status.”
“The spirit of the medical extension has always been to provide the same opportunity a player would have had if he had not been injured to retain his card, and in this case the bar was moved significantly,” the PGA Tour said in a statement.
In a Twitter message to Gay’s wife Kimberly, Poulter pledged to “deliver something very nice” to the pair during the Players Championship at Sawgrass.
